


Clint has a little sister

by pinkhairedharry



Series: Barton family [2]
Category: Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 04:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkhairedharry/pseuds/pinkhairedharry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Side story of Parker's name is Grace Bartion. Clint's life from childhood to reuniting with his sister after the Chitauri invation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clint has a little sister

Clint has a little sister

 

AN: I know Hawkeye is supposed to be from Iowa I purposely changed it to Ohio. Don’t ask why because I’m not quite sure yet but there might be an actual reason later.

 

Once upon a time there had been a happy family, a father, a mother, three boys and a girl. Mrs. Barton had been a nurse and Mr. Barton had been a mechanic. Their Daddy may have ignored his children for the most part but their Momma had more than made up for it with her fierce devotion. Barney had been the oldest, Clint the second oldest, little Grace the only girl and little Brian had been the youngest. When the children were twelve, eight, five and four their parents were killed in a car accident. They had no other living relatives so they were put in foster care. 

Grace and Brian were younger and adorable so they were placed in a pretty good home. Clint and Barney were older and Barney was a trouble maker so they got moved around a lot. There had been families that would have been happy to keep Clint as he was sweet and well-behaved when Barney wasn’t egging him on but he refused to be separated from his big brother. Eventually they were placed in an orphanage which while wasn’t the greatest could have been worse because at least they only shared a room with each other. St. Jerome’s was a church that also housed an orphanage, led by the kind and devout Father Patrick and home to a cloister of harried Nuns. The church was a separate building than the orphanage but both were within the high fence and iron gates. The orphanage had four floors. Boys were housed on the top floor, the Nuns were on the third floor, the girls were on the second floor and the classrooms, kitchen and play room were on the ground floor. 

Sister Nancy was in charge of the children. Sister Nancy was fair if overworked and underappreciated. The younger the child the more they were looked after. Clint at ten and Barney at fourteen were pretty much ignored unless they got caught misbehaving. They’d been at St. Jerome’s a week when Sister Nancy pulled them out of class and told them Brian died in an accident. She was the one to take them to Brian’s funeral and she let them spend the entire day with Gracie (still clutching the Bunny Clint had won her on the last family outing before their parents’ death) before bringing the boys back to the orphanage. Brian’s death made something snap in Barney. He started rebelling, fighting with the other boys and breaking all the rules. It took Sister Nancy threatening to send him to St. Nicholas’s Home for Boys early to get him to even partially start behaving again. He would be sent there anyways when he turned sixteen but a year and some months with his little brother was better than nothing.

A year after Brian’s funeral Sister Nancy pulled the boys from class once more and told them about the explosion at Grace’s foster home. Grace was missing but presumed alive. Barney got even angrier than he’d been the last four years and even Clint was upset and angry that the system that was supposed to take care of them had let Brian die and Grace go missing. He’d been abused enough by foster families that it had been a relief to come to St. Jerome’s but Gracie had been out there all alone.

Gracie arrived a week later knocking on their fourth floor window in the middle of the night. Barney and Clint woke up to their little sister’s head floating upside down outside their window. Barney jimmied the window open while Clint pulled her into their room. They held her until she fell asleep before putting her Clint’s twin bed because he was smaller than Barney. They had a week before Barney’s sixteenth birthday which they spent planning, gathering supplies and making sure the Sister Nancy didn’t notice Gracie. It wasn’t very hard as kids came and went fairly often, dropped off and picked up by harried social workers at any time day or night. Aside from a few kids like Barney and Clint, St. Jerome’s was just a just stop between foster homes. Before the morning wake-up call Grace made sure she was down on the girl’s floor and pretended she was supposed to be there. Every night she would sneak into their room and cling to Clint as they slept. The night before Barney’s sixteenth birthday the Barton boys disappeared not as violently but just as completely as their little sister, never to be seen by the Sisters or Father Patrick again. 

The boys were reported missing the next morning but no one expected to find them. When the officer asked if there were any recent photos of the boys, Sister Francis the newest addition to St. Jerome’s brought out a polaroid photo she’d taken the day before. Barney had an arm around Clint’s shoulder ruffling his hair and a small blonde girl clinging to his back. All three children were smiling happily causing Sister Nancy to sigh. She’d never seen Barney smile with such carefree abandon before. It took her a moment to place the girl as Grace Barton also missing for the past two weeks. She remembered the boys calling her Gracie at their little brother’s funeral. She sighed once again before explaining to the officer. Father Patrick and the Nuns prayed for their safety as well as the hope that they stayed together and took care of each other but they didn’t expect to see them again. 

Barney’s previous involvement with the shadier side of life served them well. He’d gotten a decent enough fake ID and papers that said he had guardianship of his younger siblings since their parent’s death to pass casual inspection during the past week. Grace and Clint took after their mom with blonde hair, dark blue eyes, sweet innocent faces and what Barney deemed bird bones, skinny frames that when they finished growing would be lithe but not weak. Momma Barton had been five foot eight and a hundred and thirty pounds even after giving birth to four children. She’d also been able to manhandle patients more than twice her size. Barney on the other hand took after their father tall, bulky and dark haired. At barely sixteen he was six foot two, a hundred and seventy pounds of muscle and had enough stubble on his chin that no one had questioned the fake ID that said his name was Bernard Barnes age twenty two. Gracie was Casey Barnes age nine and Clint was Frankie Barnes age eleven. 

The night they left, Barney hotwired a car and drove all night while Clint and Gracie slept. Barney woke them just before dawn so they could ditch the stolen car on the Ohio side of the Indiana-Ohio border. The plan had been to get to California land of sunshine and big dreams. Luckily Barney’s birthday was in June so no one took notice of them as they made their way more slowly across Indiana and into Illinois. Gracie and Clint proved to have a natural talent at picking pockets and neither of them minded stealing as long as no one got hurt. Clint’s twelfth birthday found them passing through a small town in rural Illinois when Carson’s Travelling Circus rolled in. Carson’s had actually been the circus Clint won Gracie’s Bunny at before their parents died. Barney couldn’t say no to the pleading looks on their tired faces. They’d adapted well and didn’t complain nearly as much they could about the constant travelling, unsteady food supply, being used as thieves and having everything they owned fit into the backpacks they carried everywhere. They’d pulled in a nice haul when they’d hit that college in Champagne so a few bucks on crap food and rigged games wouldn’t hurt them. Clint could win anyways. 

The workers were still setting up when the Barton children arrived but that didn’t deter them in the least. Clint and Gracie (and Bunny) bounced around excitedly looking at everything that caught their fancy until a worker started yelling about the circus not being open yet. Their faces fell and they hid behind Barney so quickly that the bearded Lady (Emily) promptly smacked the day-worker upside the head. She’d noticed the worn and dirty clothes, the thin faces, the way they had been looking around with reverence but touching nothing, the way the little two had hidden behind the oldest and the way that the oldest pulled himself up to his full height leveling a glare at the worker. She’d also recognized the two little ones even four years later and two states over. The boy had won his little sister the stuffed bunny she still carried at the riffle booth managing to compensate for the fact that the riffles were all rigged at the unheard of age of eight. They’d had proud parents and another little boy with them back then. From the look of all three she hadn’t needed to ask ‘em to know they were all each other had left. 

The Bearded Lady introduced herself as Emily before taking them to Old Man Carson and that was that. Barney became a roustabout, Clint with his uncanny ability to hit anything he aimed at got apprenticed to the marksmen (not just one but both the archer and rifleman, a pair of brothers that Clint adored) and Gracie joined the high wire act after the acrobats found her and Clint playing up there. They’d wanted Clint as well but Old Man Carson had already deemed him for the marksmen and his word was law. That wasn’t to say Clint wasn’t allowed to practice his high wire skill. He was but the marksmen had first dibs on his time. 

Over the years Clint would even preform as part of the high wire act whenever John or Gabe were injured or sick. Clint and Gracie loved Carson’s and it soon became more of a home to them than their barely remembered house in Ohio. Barney grew angry and jealous as his younger siblings got attention and fame from carnies and customers alike while he continued to do scutt work around the circus. Gracie’s daring and Clint’s skill drew in the crowds while he worked whatever job needed doing for a pittance. He started drinking and hanging around Bullseye, the surly knife thrower that liked to torment Clint out of spite. 

Barney’s jealous and anger lead him to teaming up with Bullseye. They started with robbing houses in whatever town Carson’s happened to pass through. When Clint was seventeen and Carson’s was back in Ohio, he stumbled over the duo robing Carson’s. Barney knocked him around before knocking him out. Clint was too surprised at Barney’s behavior to even get a warning shout out. Clint woke up with a splitting headache which he was pretty sure was part of a concussion and aching ribs as Barney and Bullseye argued about what to do with him. They’d carried him into an out of the way park that didn’t look like it saw much foot traffic during the day let alone as late as it was and leaned him up against a tree. Barney was arguing for just leaving him while Bullseye was refusing to leave a living witness. Bullseye ended the argument by throwing a knife that buried itself to the hilt in Clint’s chest. Both men took off without checking on Clint.

A minute or two had passed before a pair of late night dog walkers were dragged by their dogs to the severely injured Clint. Clint was still aware enough to notice one of the men run for help while the other attempted to keep him conscious. Clint knew he was in shock as he tried to answer the man that wasn’t leaving him to die alone but couldn’t. His last thought before slipping into oblivion was he’s got such kind eyes. 

Clint woke up in the hospital a week later riding a high of pain killers. He asked about the men that found him and the nurse told him Major Fury and Staff Sergeant Coulson had to return to base but SGT Coulson had left an address if he wanted to contact them. The next time Clint woke up an officer and a social worker were seated at his bedside. Apparently, Clint had answered SGT Coulson’s questions honestly even if he couldn’t remember. The bracelet on his wrist said, Clinton Francis Barton not Franklin Barnes like the ID in his wallet claimed. The officer asked him questions that Clint answered with half-truths and outright lies. His skills at lying had been good before they’d joined the circus but it’d had gotten exponentially better since. The officer seemed to take Clint’s story at face value. The social worker on the other hand wasn’t buying it but she didn’t call him on it so he let it slide. As an orphaned minor originally from the state of Ohio Clint would be placed back in the system when he was released from the hospital. St. Jerome’s was willing to take him until his eighteenth birthday in six months. 

Three weeks after being betrayed by Barney, Clint returned to St. Jerome’s receiving a careful hug from Sister Nancy and a gentle pat on the head from Father Patrick. Sister Nancy made him get his GED to keep his mind off his slowly healing wound. His score had been a lot high than it should have been for a boy that hadn’t gone to school the last five years but Sister Nancy wasn’t surprised. Clint had always been very smart but indifferent to his schooling. As a child he’d been very disruptive during classes until Sister Mary figured out he was bored not purposely trying to cause trouble. After that she started assigning him higher level work to keep him out of trouble. Before he’d run away Sister Mary had had him doing high school level mathematics and history and eight grade level work for his other subjects. In between studying and healing he started corresponding with the soldiers that saved his life. 

By the time his eighteenth birthday rolled around Clint was fully healed. He dropped into Carson’s looking for Gracie and was told that Barney had told everyone Clint had died. She’d packed up Bunny, some clothes and everything of value from their trailer and been gone before . Clint spent four months looking but couldn’t find a trace of her. At a loss of what to do with himself and unable to stay at Carson’s without Gracie, he decided to enlist in the Army.


End file.
